Aligned representation of visual and tactile motion directions in hMT+/V5 and fronto- parietal regions

Abstract

Moving events on the skin can be perceived through vision and touch. How does the brain create a unified multisensory representation of motion directions initially acquired in different coordinate systems? We show that the middle occipito-temporal region (hMT+/V5), along with a fronto-parietal network, encodes visual and tactile directions using a common external frame of reference independent of body posture. We characterized brain activity using fMRI in participants exposed to directional visual and tactile motion stimuli across different hand postures. We demonstrate that individually and functionally defined hMT+/V5 shows univariate preference for both visual and tactile motion and encodes motion directions across hand postures. Unlike somatosensory regions, information about tactile directions was enhanced in right hMT+/V5 when mapped using an external as compared to a somatotopic frame of reference. Crossmodal decoding showed that tactile directions defined in an external frame of reference, but not a somatotopic one, align with the representation of visual directions in the right hMT+/V5 (both in MT and MST). A whole brain searchlight group analysis confirmed these individually defined regions-of-interest results and extended the presence of an aligned visual-tactile code for directional motion in external space to the parietal and frontal cortex. Our findings reveal a brain network involving hMT+/V5 that encodes motion directions in vision and touch using a common external frame of reference.